Bayou Kidz | Hope Gets the Last Word

Article by Cindy G. Foust

Well, readers, here we are again. October. The month when everything suddenly turns pink. Pink ribbons. Pink football games. Pink T-shirts. Pink tennis shoes. Pink cupcakes. Pink everything. And for the last 13 years, October has also been the month when somebody inevitably asks me to talk about breast cancer. And that’s fair.

I have, after all, had it twice. Which feels a little excessive if you ask me. I mean, I’ve always been an overachiever, but really, cancer? Twice? Surely there was another category where I could have excelled. But here we are.

If you’ve read this column for any length of time, then you probably know at least parts of my story. You might also be thinking…”Well, here Cindy goes again talking about breast cancer,” but this year it tracks different. I’ll explain more shortly.

I was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012. I had a double mastectomy and eventually moved forward with my life, believing and hoping that chapter was behind me.

And for eight years, it was. Then came 2020. You remember 2020, don’t you? Of course, you do. The entire world shut down. We were wiping down groceries with Lysol, using leaves for toilet paper (just kidding, I ain’t that kind of girl), learning how to Zoom and standing six feet away from people we loved. And somewhere in the middle of all that, my breast cancer came back. Because apparently a global pandemic wasn’t quite enough excitement for one year.

So, there I was, facing breast cancer again, only this time the treatment looked very different. The C-word. Chemotherapy…four months of it. And I wish I could make chemotherapy sound prettier than it was, but readers, there just isn’t enough lipstick in the world for that pig.

I talk little about that time, choosing instead to block it out and focus on the positive. But for those of you that have suffered through it, it was in fact was grueling. Some days you feel strong…others you feel scared…some you feel sick. And there were probably days when my family quietly wondered which version of me was going to come walking around the corner. Scott probably even considered getting an apartment.

Cancer treatment does strange things to you. It changes your body. It changes your routine. It changes the way you think about time. Suddenly your calendar isn’t built around birthdays and vacations and holidays. It’s built around bloodwork and infusions and scans and appointment and waiting rooms. And Lord have mercy, the waiting.

I think anyone who has ever had cancer will agree that there should be an Olympic event for waiting on scan results. Like a gold medal platform. In writing about my cancer journey through the years, I was always scared of divulging my prognosis. I thought if I typed it or spoke it, it would be permanent. Does that make sense? Because after chemotherapy ended, I continued immunotherapy, and somewhere along the way, I began to accept what I believed would be my new reality.

This was going to be a chronic disease that I would have to manage the rest of my life. By the way, I didn’t particularly like that arrangement, mind you, but nobody asked me.

So, I did what people do. I kept going. I went to work. I loved my family. I wrote my books. I wrote this column. I fussed about Scott’s grass obsession. I spoiled my grandbaby. I ate dessert. I cooked. I worried. I prayed. I laughed. I lived. And every six months, I went back to MD Anderson.

If you’ve never been to MD Anderson, let me tell you, it is one of those places where you are incredibly grateful it exists and simultaneously wish with every fiber of your being that you never had a reason to walk through its doors. There is a strange familiarity to it after a while. You know where to park and which elevator to take.

So, this past August, I went back for another routine six-month checkup. Well, at least routine by cancer standards. And the drill is the same…appointments, tests, bloodwork and more waiting.

And somewhere at the end of that visit my doctor said something I wasn’t prepared to hear.

“You’re cured.”

And then came the second sentence. “You don’t need to come back for a year.” Readers, I have scheduled hair appointments with greater frequency. For years, my life had been measured in six-month increments. And suddenly somebody had handed me twelve.

I wish I could tell you I immediately jumped up, threw confetti in the examination room and ran through the halls yelling, “I’M CURED!”

I did not. The feeling was much stranger than that. I was relieved, sure. I was joyful, absolutely. Gratitude also fits in there nicely. But there was something else mixed in there, too. Angst. Almost disbelief.

Because when you’ve lived with cancer for a long time, your mind gets trained to brace itself. You learn not to get too far ahead. You celebrate good scans but quietly wonder about the next one. Cancer has a way of teaching you to wait for the other shoe to drop. And then one day somebody tells you maybe there isn’t another shoe.

I mean, what in the world am I supposed to do with that? I suspect I’m still processing it. But somewhere between Houston and home, one thought kept returning to me.

Hope.

Hope is such a small four-letter word (I’ve said plenty of other four-letter words during these past six years cause y’all know I love Jesus but I cuss a little and cancer will make you cuss). But goodness gracious, it can carry some heavy things. I want to be clear that I had hope in 2012. And I had hope in 2020. And sometimes my hope was enormous and sometimes it was hanging on by its fingernails. But it was always there.

And that’s what I want to say this October. Not because I’m a doctor (well, I do have my medical degree from the internet). Get the mammogram. Do the self-exams. Pay attention to your body. Go to the appointment you’ve been putting off. If something feels wrong, ask. And if you don’t like the answer, keep asking. And IF you do get some scary diagnosis…continue to hope.

Because hope does not mean you aren’t scared. Gosh, I was scared. But hope gives us something to hold onto while we are walking through the hard parts. Something beyond the next infusion, scan and appointment.

And sometimes, if you are incredibly blessed, that chapter includes a doctor looking across the room at you and saying a word you didn’t think you would ever hear: cured.

I have written a lot of October columns over these 13½ years. I’ve written about pink ribbons and mammograms and treatments and friends and fear and courage. But this October feels different. This year, I’m not writing to you from the middle of the storm. I’m writing from a place I wasn’t sure I would ever reach. And maybe that’s why I feel so strongly about saying this to whoever needs to hear it today.

Keep going. Because there was a time when I believed cancer would always be sitting quietly in the corner of my life. And maybe, in some ways, the experience always will.

After all these years, I finally get to tell MD Anderson that I’m going to need a little space.

Friends, let October remind you that behind every pink ribbon represents a real person with a real family and a real story. Mine happens to have taken thirteen years, two diagnoses, a double mastectomy, four months of chemotherapy, years of immunotherapy and more prayers than I could ever count to get me to this particular sentence. I am cured.

And after everything cancer has had to say in my life, I’m especially grateful that hope gets the last word.